A correspondent notes a discussion on the London Review of Books site (and their Facebook page) about the origins of a line which goes:

“When Dido went Aeneas-ing”?

… and how it continues. I’ve asked the diligent wombats on the Project Wombat list and have read some good speculation, but it just occurred to me that this might be some sort of Classics department parody of ‘Frog went a courtin’ … Has anyone heard the Dido line before and/or can comment on its origins?

UPDATE (a couple days later): Nina Gilbert responded on the Project Wombat list (perhaps this will help tweak someone’s memory):

Not an answer, but maybe a clue?

It’s not in my dissertation, which was (mostly) about Elizabethan madrigal texts. But it does fit the style of English glees and catches from around the turn of the 18th century. English schoolboys would have studied Virgil. Later, as men going to sing in taverns, they would craft bawdy or pastoral verses about classical characters as well as assorted nymphs and shepherds.

Hope this helps,

Nina Gilbert (D.M.A. 1985: “Arcadian Pastoral Characters in Post-Elizabethan Music,” including the directory “Who’s Who in Arcadia”)

Official description:

This documentary highlights the Aegean coastal region of Anatolia in today’s southwestern Turkey. Densely settled in Classical times, this region featured some of the most important cities in the ancient world of the eastern Mediterranean. Among these are Ephesus, famous for the Library of Celsus and the Temple of Hadrian; Pergamon, a very large city whose library rivaled that of Alexandria; Miletus, one of the oldest ancient cities of the region; and Helicarnassus, with its Mausoleum,one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

• via The Archaeology Channel | Welcome.

Currently on the main page; if you visit later, you might have to poke around the site a bit.

… in Classical Greek:

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